Recent reviews by Scaber

No technical difficulties which is weird for EA game, but that was the only good thing at that time.

The game is lacking in terms of feeling the speed - you are going +250km/h? it looks like you are barely doing 80, even with motion blur. You also get only 2 (two!) restarts - why?

This is a grindy game; to make money you need to win races, to win races you need to have a better car, to have a better car you need to race a lot or race the high-stakes races, which in return ask for a buy-in. The buy-in races give you more money, but are harder (obviously), the cars cost a lot of money, same goes for the upgrades, let alone cosmetics.
You need to earn a LOT of in-game money to even start having fun (cosmetics, and upgrades for your car)

The "cutscene" that plays after you finish a race is annoying and I did not see an option to skip or disable it
The "cutscene" that plays after you finish a race while being chased by police is annoying as well -> Thank you, I know that I was hunted by the police in this game
You are getting stopped after a race, need to look at a nice "cutscene" where you strike a pose, and then you have to look at yet another "cutscene" that automatically resumes the police chase after a bit in a completely different spot then I was in when I finished a race.
The race finishes - you are still moving in the "cutscene", and whenever you were being chased by cops then you get another timewaster, the cop chase resumes - 3 sec iirc, with cops right behind you, no matter if you were close to losing them. Instead of killing the race/chase momentum it would be nice to just continue with the gameplay, or just give me a small menu with details - who won, speed, money earned.

If I crash into a wall due to that, it is my fault, and please do not waste my time - even if we are talking seconds per race/cop chase.

The mentioned "cutscenes", really made me not like this games, it kills the immersion, it kills all the fun of a police chase in the middle of race.
It would be fine it the race was just a race -> You finished it? good, now back to the menu and choose another race.
Same for the cop chases, at least the start.
I really hate those "cutscenes", they feel like a waste of time and remember, they are there ON EVERY RACE OR COP CHASE.

I am not a fun of the drift mechanic, as in the burst nitro to cut corners is a suggested way to enter corners, by the game itself. It kinda kills the momentum if you suddenly get a BURST of speed on a 90 angle corner, but with normal drifting you lose too much speed.
Also enemies use it, and they are cheating a lot due to the rubber banding.

The "flying" sounded interesting at first, but if you are going fast you can literally FLY into a building, right into a 3rd floor resident, you also have less control of your car in that state.

A lot of cops, like a lot, you can think you will run a few races after work? haha, no, here is a 30min cop chase only due to the amount of cops, and remember the longer it takes the harder it gets, and to out-run the higher heat cops, you will need better car and upgrades.
Hmm....what was that? You do not have any money? Sucks to be you, grind for it as mentioned above.
Oh wait you cannot even get to the races due to cops being everywhere? hehe ;]

The story, at least in the beggining is bad, but I never got to the rest of it as seen by the hours played (but it should be a little bit more, like around 3-4h).
The music is fine, but more variety would be good to include more genres.
The day/week mechanic is awful, it should never be there
Another thing, there is no fast-travel, which sounds fine at first, but then you realize that it is yet another timewaster - just give us the option and we will either use it or not, simple as that.

Overall graphic is ok, depending on the weather it can look ok, or really good.

The characters look interesting due to the cartoon-ish style, at least in theory, but the reality is different. Effects are nice, they look cool.
Going back to characters a bit, even after my short time played I can easily say - they are cringe, boring, obnoxious and many more.

The micro-transactions - there are 3 bodykits available in the shop, they cost 70$ or around that.
There are other things to buy, but they range from 4$ (on sale?) bundle up to 15-20$ for ONE car - why?
Battlepass, that costs 15$, and gives you ♥♥♥♥.
The games is not finished in terms of single-player, I bought this game on a summer sale, and I still regret spending 15$ on it.

But here is the twist - the game is being updated, and will probably be updated until end of this, BUT ALL the changes that are being made are targeted for Online Play, which is fine, but what about single-player folks? why lock content behind a Online "version" of the game. Literally the lack of cars, events and races kills the single-player expierience.
And yes, the offline and online has different/separate progression system.

And Unite mod won't load the .exe file for this game, because I apparently have a bad version of the FMM?

Either way, game is not fun 0 I am bored and annoyed, so nothing more will be said about this game.

I was unable to launch the game in the beggining, it took all of my available RAM and then it crashed, along with every app I had opened, and when it finally did start -> It detected wrong settings, I was unable to change or see settings, the game would not start when I clicked play game, it would just get stuck in loading screen.

It does not like Wallpaper Engine, or Logitech Hub, or anything in the background - even Steam.
I was able to find a solution to the 1st problem -> It does not open and it crashes -> Delete the ".dll" file called "TargetHardwareProfile" - no idea what this is and what is it used for -> The game opened then, I was able to login to Xbox/MS account.

But there were additional issues - the game settings would "open", but no idea where, the screen would go blurry as in it opened a new in-game menu and focused on it, but no menu to be found. I was able to navigate around it and I was hearing noises of settings being changed etc.

By accident I run a benchmark settings -> It would test my PC and detect approperiate settings.
Well, it started (you cannot end it by the way, you NEED to look at it and wait for it to finish -> or use Alt +F4), it detected that I am using a 74Hz monitor, and it set my graphic settings to medium.

I have a 4k 144Hz monitor as a main one, the 74Hz monitor is a secondary one _> Even disabling it makes no difference
My GPU is RTX 4090
CPU is AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

So not idea where it got the medium settings from, but ok.
I tried starting a game -> It would get stuck at loading screen

So I did what everyone would do -> Verify updates for hardware and system, Verify game files and Reinstall the game in the end, nothing helped.

This is the only game I have such issues with:
Cannot open -> Had to delete some weird dll file
Cannot change settings -> Maybe due to the above, or this game is just badly made
Cannot start the actual game -> Stuck at loading screen

All of those issues were reported to the Developers and Microsoft.
This game does not like Windows 11 (which is weird - same company), as well as ANY other application it would seem (even explorer.exe or taskmgr.exe)
Event viewer always says that either the app crashes -> due to "low" ram, since it take all on launch and then it crashes, or due to some Kernel level crap.

big brain portals

9/10, Truly an amazing mod. I finished it with 40h+ on the save file, Steam is on 60h+.
I was stalling, got lost, just AFK'ed with game opened for a lot of the time when I played.

I will look past the general Gothic issues with combat, AI, softlocks, bugs, crashes, etc, they are happening all of the time across the Gothic Series and mods.

To be honest, Chronicles of Myrtana it's not really a mod, it is an entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game, I can easily call it a prequel to the G1, and it pains me to say this due to nostalgia - this mod is better than G2 NotR, to which I put thousands of hours by now.

The story starts out weak, pretty much the same trope for all Gothic games - not that interesting at all, but in the next chapters, it gets more and more exciting. You learn several things about the organizations, island, and government. You gather knowledge about the true nature of living on this island, the secrets, the conspiracies.

The characters are interesting, to say the least, not all of them are worth your time, but the majority of "main" characters are worthwhile to analyze, the music is very nice, and the atmosphere is there.
There are so many little details that you might miss if you do not explore, not everything is explained, and requires you to think on your own with the additional help of the main hero's journal, books and notes.

Random events are very interesting, and I did not expect them in that amount (still missed some apparently).

As for the weapons, it is nice that there are a lot of DEX weapons, maybe a little bit too much for my taste. As with most Gothic games, some types are better than others, one-handed makes the game easy, especially with the bonuses - armor penetration, weapon mastery, but they don't look cool.

The crafting system is very rewarding, you can sell items to your master for a better value, but it is a one-time thing, after that, it's not really profitable or worth your time if you want to make money. It is useful if you need a weapon with a little boost, but that gets overwhelmed by the weaponry found on the island or given as a reward after quest pretty quick.

Magic system works differently, and I noticed it is hella expensive in terms of LP, but I haven't really deep-dived into it since it was not really intended by the developers. You should play as a warrior or warrior-hybrid from what I have gathered - also more "canon".

Combat also has its unique traits, there are boss fights with actual mechanics, which unfortunately I was able to miss, due to me being over-leveled from all the exploring, for example - Arena boss fight, I finished it in like 10 seconds, and only got to see one mechanic; there are many more examples of this, but that is the nature of Gothic games, if you explore too much = you get more powerful and the content gets much much easier - Nothing wrong with that, that is the nature of RPG games.

Quests can be completed with different approaches which actually affect the world in some aspects - especially the G3 style ending.
Side-quests are also addictive in some weird ways, you have the most obvious approach, but you can also talk/explore to see a different way to finish the quest, which is really awesome if you make a choice that is more comfortable with your playstyle, I suggest looking up the quest wiki/solution on how you could do it differently, but only IF you are not interested in re-playing the game soon.

The world, the island is interestingly built, although I would like some places to be more spread out to give the illusion that everything is not so close to each other. You have a farm that is literally next to a swamp filled with monsters, bandits, and pirates. On the other side, you have a small village that seems to be barely standing, and it is connected to one of the dangerous areas in the game where "The Beast" is, but it is also very close to the main city. I understand that there were limitations and it is not game or immersion-breaking, but it seems kind of odd if you think about it. The city itself is very confusing, you will spend time learning city layout and even with a map you will get lost for quite often, it also could be a little spread out so not every building is right next to each other, but again - this is not a real issue.

I love all of the little easter eggs hidden throughout the world, shops/buildings named after other mods, NPCs that are voiced by very famous actors in Poland, who have their side-quests related to TV Shows where they have played in the past, several hidden memes, that you will only know if you explore the city or if you know the memes (obviously) - Potion Seller, Harnaś Gaming, Grove 4-life, and other.

Not everything is great though, in and after Chapter 4 you can see that the quality somewhat drops, most likely due to a situation that took place within the developers team.
As fun as the dungeon crypt/ruin raid sounds, it is very underwhelming, it was painted as a really hard thing, but you can do it solo for 95% of it, the puzzles are easy, it's not really rewarding (but mandatory to the story), it's short and boring in my opinion - the idea itself is very interesting, just like the Addanos Temple in G2 NotR, but it delivers an even worse experience, it seems rushed, I was expecting to spend some time in there, but it took like 10 minutes tops.

The "canon" ending segment it's interesting, city being invaded and engulfed in flames, where you can save your "friends", a nice idea, delivered kind of poorly, but not bad overall.
As for the "canon" ending, it is very much forced, copied from Lee's history, with more debatable things left out, it is there just to be connected to G1 - Marvin told the story to Gomez on the ship after being sentenced to work in the Valley of Mines for collaborating with Ulrich and Volker (you were doing quests for them to save your brother) due to the new law being implemented, that everyone that helped them will be convicted and punished (death, sent to VoM, etc.). The main reason is that a lot of the wealthy citizens found you to be a problem for their little conspiracies, they feared Marvin, due to his influence in Archolos, problem-solving skills and other traits, which you gathered over your stay in Archolos, so they wanted to get rid of him, even after he SAVED the entire city.
In the last cut-scene we deduct Marvin is really Scar from G1 (the scar on his face, and the sword match the in-game NPC) - I think developers even said that it is correct.

After beating the game I learnt about the secret "not-canon" ending - You can actually SAVE your brother, but you cannot finish a single side-quest in the after he's gone missing (that applies to getting into the city via the barrel), as Marvin says across the game on several occasions - You are losing time getting involved in things that are not important to you. Very nice touch for the "speed-runners", an interesting and thoughtful solution to that style of gameplay.

Even with all the issues that I have mentioned this mods is easily a 9/10 for me, I have never played such a good "mod"(more like a full pledged Gothic game - it really is in a league of it's own), if I were to rank this mod, it would be the best mod of them all, that can be given a status of Gothic game, a prequel to G1.

I highely recommend playing this mod since it is free, it is profesionally done, you can see the passion behind it and you can look past the flaws - every Gothic game or mod has them and the ones present here are not severe. So intall the mod, give it a little bit of time and enjoy it.

New Duck just dropped

I won't drink any soda in a can from now on

I literally fisted my way through most of the game due to animation cancelling in combat.
I dropped this game, because I was not enjoying it anymore - no idea why tho, it is a good game, old but good

Died after 8 days.

guns

It might rain